Who was Maria Isabel Gutierrez
Velasco? I don't know. I'd like to know, because one of the main difficulties in making this book is that I haven't found anyone who could talk to me about the mature María Isabel, only my family and the people she met in childhood. It's significant, because I think in adulthood, nobody loved him, nobody cared for him. I have therefore written my interpretations of María Isabel, based on two specific sources: official Franco documents and male voices. From there, I had to do a great translation and interpretation exercise to explain who it was. Surely at some points in the book I've been a little brave, because nobody has confirmed to me that María Isabel was really that wrestling and rebellious woman I've imagined.

However, it has described its context in detail.
Yes. Her mother became a widow and she herself was a very young orphan. They have already suffered a great family trauma, Maria Isabel's little sister Mari Carmen, who died at the age of four, hit by a car. Shortly after his father died and from Astillero to Santander [Cantabria, Spain]. At that time, María Isabel approached a world different from her hometown. And also at that time, there were signs that people could have psychic suffering somewhat greater than average. From there, her mother, unable to control her children, entrusted her daughter to the institutions.

He has used the term “psychological suffering” throughout the book.
I've had a bit of fear every time I've written it, and when I say it, I also move my language, don't think -- I don't know if it's not very naive, and a little clumsy. I find it difficult to say that they are diseases when we talk about mental health, and I prefer to use the term psychological suffering, especially not to obey the psychiatric logic. In addition, María Isabel, like other psychiatrized people, received numerous diagnoses. Psychiatrists put the diagnoses as if they put a flag to conquer the territory. Apart from this, I have only one clear thing: That Maria Isabel suffered a lot, that there were a lot of storms inside her, that it had to be very difficult to be inside her head and reacted to that pain in certain ways. I don't know more than that. On the other hand, I don't think diagnostics bring much, because often the symptoms are similar, and drugs and violence as well.

He says his mother gave in to the institutions. Specifically, to the entity called the Board for the Protection of Women. What was that?
Surely the Board of Trustees is one of the issues that has cost me the most to understand. It was a kind of social service, but it was aimed especially at girls and women. I identify that in the Spanish State there were 60-80 centers that ruled seven religious orders and that, on occasions, the entire building belonged to the Board and all the girls were under the supervision of this institution. But it was also very common for religious schools to have four or five Patron Seats, or six or ten.

How did the girls get to these centers?
The family might want to get rid of it, or report it to the police or a neighbor, who if he was a minor sent him directly to the Board. I've realized that I also had in my head a feeling that Franco's repression was much more violent against men and, in the case of the LGTB collective, against the Mariches. And of course, maybe not so many women were incarcerated, maybe not so many women in ditches, maybe not so many women were incarcerated with the law of Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation: the truth is they were driving them from another circuit, and there's hardly any information about that circuit, because the Central Archive was burned, and then there was flooding, or vice versa, in short, the central documents went to the load. And of course, religious orders have not made any fuss to take care of it. Only a few documents remain in the provincial archives.

However, in the case of María Isabel they applied the law.
They didn't know what to do with him, and they actually put him in prison several times, but not so much for the many and varied crimes he could commit. The law of Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation led to the judicial circuit. Especially from a certain age, which is not written anywhere, the “rebel girls” were not sent to the Board, but to the Courts of Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation. Maria Isabel received several files for psychological distress, lack of family compliance, prostitution, public order alteration…

On the other hand, I find it interesting, and also significant, that this law emerged very late in Franco: It was approved in 1970. Until that year they used the Law of Vagos and Malhechores of the Second Spanish Republic almost unchanged. It was one of the few republican laws that Franco collected and implemented unhindered.

And why did a new law emerge?At the time
there was some openness and it was thought that danger and crimes should be understood from a more scientific perspective, so they modified the law because it was not red. From that moment on, for example, people who were in charge of measuring the mind, seeking a more physical explanation of criminality, rather than looking at moral explanations or moral perversion, which is what was done until then. Once read and documented, it is curious how they try to find evidence on their face to prove that Maria Isabel was dangerous.

He died before deciding whether he was dangerous or not.
Yes, it was the last time he was arrested. He was waiting to be transferred to a psychiatric prison in Madrid, where the processes were very long. In the latter detention he was arrested on 4 November and died on 9 November before the reports arrived. Some police reports came several months after Maria Isabel's death.

And what happened after his death appearance?In college, I had Igor
Ahedo as a professor of political behavior -- he was an amazing professor -- and he talked to us about the improvisation of the laity: there's something going on over and over and over again, and suddenly people don't accept it. This is the only case of María Isabel. And it's curious, because she was an uncomfortable woman for her fellow prostitutes. Maria Isabel wasn't nice, she wasn't nice, she couldn't chat with her. It is therefore striking that it is precisely in favour of someone like this. But I think his colleagues knew that a person like María Isabel did not have to be in jail, but had to be protected from all the violence suffered, but that was not the case. And there he died in jail, at the age of 23, burned, when it seemed that Franco had already died and that it could be the beginning of a democratic project.

I guess the puts on Cortes Street would see that there was no room for them in democracy. Because there was no one, and today there is no one, let alone the crazy. Right now, in Cruces or in Basurto, people are against their will, people who, among other things, do not have the right to vote.

The workers of Cortes Street protested the situation. Strike.
Having said that, I was afraid and I am still afraid, because I think the press of the time had exaggerated that protest: they called him a strike, but I don't know if he puts it. But I know he puts them in. “Today we are not going to work, we dig the penises on the sidewalk, follow with your wife.” But I have found no evidence that they talked about strike or were considered members of the same working class. I read it in the press.

The press would return to a certain coordinate or language, but puts them certainly closed all the bars of Cortes Street. They did a collective, solidary action by a colleague, right?
Yes. Furthermore, it is interesting that the press and social movements in Bilbao – the feminist movement, the LGTB movement and the COPEL support committee – still did not raise the debate on prostitution at that time, at least they have not explained it to me and I have not found any documents on it either. No one thought whether being a destination was a job or not, no one reflected on this issue and yet they considered it a strike. And it's very interesting, very interesting, because if you understood it as a strike, this means you put vultures in a very concrete position: the position of the worker. Today, I don't know if something like this can happen.

Before committing suicide, I would like to refer to the style. The data from the study are well documented, but their voice also appears in the book. I really liked it.
The tone of the book has been a bet. Some people have told me that the story has pushed them back in a few moments. It was a risky wager, the language of the book is stupid, but I'm from Ortuella and I felt comfortable there, it's no accident. It has not been difficult for me to approach the quinquias of Bilbao or Santander. I insist: Left Margin, Mining Area. I've grown up there, that's my world, where people are incarcerated on charges of theft and not ideals. Until adulthood, I have not met anyone imprisoned for their ideals. And Maria Isabel's world was like this.

You are a member from the beginning of the Pikara Magazine project. The project is 12 years old in November. Few
things make me as proud as Pikara, a project that has changed my life, that of many more, and I am very proud of what we have done.

What goals do they have for the
future?What we were offering today is much easier to find in other spaces, so for the future, as a project, we have to find our place in that reality. It seems to me that we have the possibility to grow inwards, and I think it is up to us, or at least I would like that. We've put on the table the need to do feminist journalism, we've opened a lot of debates -- I think that's where we have to go, but not get obsessed -- we have to feel comfortable in a place of some avant-garde, and now, performing journalism in a feminist way, in work dynamics.

I, in particular, want to write more. We seem to lack the last blow in the growth process, which would allow us to write to journalists. In the photos you won't see, because you still can't show, but we're in a very special place.

Where, Andrea?We are at the feminist cultural center La
Sinsorga, in Bilbao, on Askao Street, 9. We hope that this place will be a point of reference for the culture and feminist thinking of Euskal Herria, also for the Spanish state, and I want people to come also from Paris and Berlin.

We've begun to build this space between Irantzu [Varela] and the two, mostly, but always within our collective fondness. We want this place to be a meeting place of feminisms in the center of Bilbao. I want to think it will be something like Mamiki, but all year round: a place to come quiet without making a date with anyone. A safe space, because difficult times come.

And do you have other writing or research projects on your hands?
I have some ideas in my head, but the truth is that I haven't been totally obsessed yet, so I'm going from here to there to find what's hooked on me. There are things I would like to investigate, but research takes a lot of time and money. I have spent a lot of money with this book, I don’t want to know how many… I would have to sell many copies to make it profitable.